Essays in Rebellion eBook

IV

DEEDS NOT WORDS

As he wrote—­as he wrote his best, while
the shafts of the spirit lightened in his brain—­Heine
would sometimes feel a mysterious figure standing
behind him, muffled in a cloak, and holding, beneath
the cloak, something that gleamed now and then like
an executioner’s axe. For a long while
he had not perceived that strange figure, when, on
visiting Germany, after fourteen years’ exile
in Paris, as he crossed the Cathedral Square in Cologne
one moonlight night, he became aware that it was following
him again. Turning impatiently, he asked who he
was, why he followed him, and what he was hiding under
his cloak. In reply, the figure, with ironic
coolness, urged him not to get excited, nor to give
way to eloquent exorcism:

“I am no antiquated ghost,”
he continued. “I’m quite a practical
person, always silent and calm. But I must tell
you, the thoughts conceived in your soul—­I
carry them out, I bring them to pass.

“And though years may go by, I take
no rest until I transform
your thoughts into reality. You think;
I act.

“You are the judge, I am the gaoler,
and, like an obedient
servant, I fulfil the sentence which you
have ordained, even if
it is unjust.

“In Rome of ancient days they carried
an axe before the
Consul. You also have your Lictor,
but the axe is carried
behind you.

No artist—­no poet or writer, at all events—­could
enjoy a more consolatory vision. The powerlessness
of the word is the burden of writers, and “Who
hath believed our report?” cry all the prophets
in successive lamentation. They so naturally
suppose that, when truth and reason have spoken, truth
and reason will prevail, but, as the years go by,
they mournfully discover that nothing of the kind occurs.
Man, they discover, does not live by truth and reason:
he rather resents the intrusion of such quietly argumentative
forms. When they have spoken, nothing whatever
is yet accomplished, and the conflict has still to
begin. The dog returns to his own vomit; the soul
convicted of sin continues sinning, and he that was
filthy is filthy still. Thence comes the despair
of all the great masters of the word. The immovable
world admires them, it praises their style, it forms
aesthetic circles for their perusal, and dines in
their honour when they are dead. But it goes
on its way immovable, grinding the poor, enslaving
the slave, admiring hideousness, adulating vulgarity
for its wealth and insignificance for its pedigree.
Grasping, pleasure-seeking, indifferent to reason,
and enamoured of the lie, so it goes on, and the masters
of the word might just as well have hushed their sweet
or thunderous voices. For, though they speak
with the tongue of men and angels, and have not action,
what are they but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal?